Moffatt, Virginia

Moffatt, Virginia

Virginia Moffatt

1 June 2015Review

Haymarket Books, 2014; 230pp; £12.99

I was looking forward to this book – an account of Rory Fanning’s walk across America in memory of his friend, Pat Tillman.

I am usually drawn to stories of individuals undertaking major endurance events, and this had the added bonus of being carried out by someone working for peace.

The comments on the back were all overwhelmingly positive so I was a bit disappointed that Worth Fighting For didn’t quite match my expectations.

It starts well enough,…

31 March 2015Comment

Virginia Moffatt looks to her running heroes for inspiration

This morning I woke to the news that Benjamin Netanyahu has won Israel’s general election. My heart sank, because, with such a military hawk in power, prospects for peace in Israel-Palestine look further away then ever. It is easy when faced with such news to fall into despair. To believe the vision of a just society for both Palestinians and Israeli citizens is impossible. Sometimes, it is feels easier to admit defeat.

When I’m feeling in this frame of mind, I’m always grateful for…

31 March 2015Review

Lutterworth Press, 2014; 312pp; £20

An Anglican priest, former chair of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship and chair of the Peace Museum in Bradford, Clive Barrett is ideally placed to document Anglican resistance to the First World War.

I was hooked from the opening chapter which shows how militarism was embedded in the 39 ‘articles of religion’ to which all Anglican clergy must assent. Article 37 – ‘It is lawful for Christian Men, at the command of the magistrate, to wear weapons, and serve in wars’ – clarified…

1 February 2015Comment

Our new diarist approaches a significant milestone

I’m going to be 50 this year. What once seemed an impossibility will become a reality in July. In the next 10 years, I will experience the menopause, watch our children leave home, begin to feel the impact of ageing on my body. This is the decade which will force me to admit I am no longer young. Such life events always put me in a ruminating mood, and this week I’ve been thinking a lot about what turning 50 means for my activism.

In some ways things have changed very little since…

28 September 2014Feature

Peace News considers peace paintings by Anne Gregson

For the last few years we have been holidaying at Little Wedlock, owned by Quakers Anne and Malcolm Gregson. Anne is a fine artist who runs a gallery with her daughter. In August, we were treated to her latest collection ‘The Dance of Life and the Dance of Death’, created especially for an exhibition about peace.

‘The Dance of Life’ is a set of four paintings on silk hangings. ‘Forest Green’ has been sold, but the remaining hangings are still part of the exhibition. ‘Life Giving…

21 July 2014Review

Honno Welsh Women’s Press, 2014; 450pp; £10.99

Every now and then, I am sent a book to review that is an absolute pleasure to read from cover to cover. This marvellous collection of interviews and essays by women activists is one such book.

I have to confess to having a personal investment – one of the essays is by my friend Zoe Broughton, and I know several of the women featured – but I suspect that might be true of many PN readers. For, between them, the interviewees have been involved in every major campaign in the UK…

9 June 2014Review

OR Books, 2014; 120pp; £9. Available for online purchase throught the OR books website.

‘When I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2007, I vowed to friends I would not add to the surfeit of cancer confessionals’, Mike Marqusee writes in his introduction to this collection of essays. It was, however, a promise he ‘should have known’ he wouldn’t keep. And thank goodness he didn’t, because this is no ordinary account of living with cancer, and is probably the finest writing I’ve ever come across on the subject.

For Marqusee isn’t particularly interested in telling us…

21 February 2014Review

lulu.com, 2012; 362pp; £21.97

At the heart of this collection of essays is a brilliant and wonderful idea: academics presenting the case against Trident whilst protesting outside Faslane naval base. These al fresco conferences took place in January and June 2007 as part of the year-long Faslane 365 blockade, and resulted in the base being closed down and numerous arrests. Both were clearly successful events, and the road outside Faslane gates must count as one of the most unusual conference venues ever…

21 February 2014Comment

Family television wrestles with the concept of redemptive violence


Image: Casey.B.Bassett CC-BY-SA-3.0
via Wikimedia Commons

As the longest running sci-fi show in the world, the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who was always going to be a big event. It could have easily fallen flat on its face, but luckily ‘The Day of the Doctor’ did not disappoint. Steven Moffat’s excellent story was brilliantly acted, had real heart and the right balance of comedy and seriousness, nods to the past and a marvellous set-up for the future…

26 May 2013Review

Faber and Faber, 2012; 448pp; £18.99

‘A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture. Or so it seemed for now, to a woman with flame-colored hair, who marched uphill to meet her demise.’ So opens Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel, as her heroine Dellarobia Turnbow staggers up the mountainside to start a potentially disastrous love affair. It’s an arresting beginning, and with any other writer betrayal, heartbreak and destruction would follow. But this is Kingsolver, a novelist with wider…

26 September 2012Review

Vintage, 2012; 496pp; £7.99

On paper this book should have a lot to offer PN readers. It begins in 1911 with the introduction of Connie Calloway, a fledgling suffragette, to Will Maitland, a cricketer, and traces their relationship through her increasing involvement in politics and his eventual path to war. This is a fascinating historical period, and a fictional account of a young woman moving from talk to action, whilst drawn to a man who despises her values, should have engaged and involved me.

28 August 2012Feature

Peace campaigner Virginia Moffatt is (partially) seduced by the Olympics

Munich 1972. I am seven, enthralled by Korbut’s gymnastics, Spitz’s seven golds for swimming. This is the first time I’m old enough to get the Olympics. I am vaguely aware something bad has happened to some Israeli athletes, but too young to realise that politics and the Olympics go hand in hand.

Moscow 1980. I am 15, old enough to understand the US is asking us to join their boycott (because of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan) but young enough not to know what I think. I do…

28 August 2012Review

Zero, 2011; 79pp; £6.99

PN readers may recall that I’m a big fan of Laurie Penny (aka Penny Red). I’m an equally big fan of feminism, so I was keen to read Meat Market, her series of essays on the subject.

Penny is a serious and passionate writer, and there’s a lot to commend in this book. The opening chapter on sexualisation demonstrates how disempowering the supposedly ‘liberating’ raunch culture actually is, and how it serves commercial rather than individual interests.

Similarly, the…

15 December 2011Review

Pluto, 2011; 224pp; £12.99

Laurie Penny aka “Penny Red”, first grabbed my attention earlier this year with her heartfelt and well-constructed articles about the student protests. But it was her twitter feed on 27 March that confirmed me as a big fan. This was the day of the anti-cuts march that saw protests all over London. I don’t quite know how she did it, but Penny seemed to be everywhere, giving an honest and unique perspective that we never saw in the mainstream media.

So it’s an absolute pleasure to have…

1 October 2011Review

Praeger 2010; 239pp; £23.70

I’m a terribly picky reader and my PN reviews can be a little, shall we say, critical? So it’s a delight to be given a book that deserves the plaudits it has received from the likes of Mairead Maguire Corrigan, Daniel Ellsberg and Bruce Kent.

Reading What Nobel Really Wanted reminded me of a great Polyps cartoon – Jesus’ Last Words. As Jesus hangs on the cross the caption reads, “And I don’t want anyone to go twisting what I’ve said into an excuse for a load of right wing bullshit……